Fish restoration efforts on Maine's Kennebec River took
a historic step forward today as the Edwards Dam was breached and the river
ran free for the first time in 162 years. The Kennebec is the largest river
in the United States to benefit from a dam removal and Edwards Dam is among
the largest dams ever removed in the nation. Today's action came as the
result of a precedent setting 1997 decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC) that the environmental and economic benefits of a free
flowing Kennebec are greater than the economic benefits of continued operation
of the Edwards Dam hydroelectric project. FERC denied the relicensing request
in 1997 and ordered the dam removed. "With removal of the Edwards Dam,
the Kennebec River has been given a new lease on life," said Steve Brooke,
coordinator of the Kennebec Coalition, which includes American Rivers,
the Atlantic Salmon Federation, the Natural Resources Council of Maine,
and Trout Unlimited and its Kennebec Valley Chapter. The Kennebec Coalition
was formed in 1989 with the goal of removing the Edwards Dam and restoring
the Kennebec River. The Edwards Dam harmed fish by flooding critical habitat
and preventing fish that migrate from the ocean from reaching prime upstream
spawning grounds. Removal of Edwards Dam opens up 17 miles of spawning
and nursery habitat. Populations of 10 species of migratory fish are expected
to benefit including: American shad, Atlantic salmon, striped bass, Atlantic
sturgeon, short-nosed sturgeon, blueback herring, and alewives. Populations
will not rebound overnight, but are expected to gain steadily over the
next 20 years.

30.06.99: Namibia: Epupa-Dam
decision damned

From the June 30 edition of SA's Mail and Guardian:

A FINAL decision on where to construct the Epupa hydropower
project is beingdelayed by the ongoing war in Angola which has prevented
officials fromLuanda attending a key meeting in Windhoek. Namibia and
Angola are alreadyat loggerheads over which site on the Kunene river to
choose with theAngolans favouring a smaller dam in the Baynes Mountains,
while Namibiawants a dam in the area of the Epupa Falls. Mines and
Energy Minister JesayaNyamu has said that Angolan government officials have
been too preoccupiedwith the war against Unita to be able to attend scheduled
meetings of thePermanent Joint Technical Commission (PJTC) on Epupa.
Namibia is adamantthat the plant should be built at Epupa Falls, arguing
that Baynes is toosmall, prone to drought and too dependent on Gove. The
feasibility report onthe scheme said the Baynes site is environmentally and
socially moreacceptable, and would have less impact on the nomadic
Himba communities inthe Kunene region.

29.06.99: Sweden: DEVASTATING
HYDROPOWER PROJECT NEEDS TO BE STOPPED!

URGENT! Please distribute as widely as possible!The power company Jaemtkraft in the province of Jaemtland
in the middlepart of Sweden wants to exploit the stream Roennoeforsen
in the Laanganriver in the north-west part of the province for hydropower.

Roennoeforsen has very high nature conservation values:
19 species oflichens, which are on the list of redlisted in Sweden,
have been found inthe forest and on rocks in an area less than one hectare,
close to thestream. One of the species is endangered (threat category
1) and as manyas six are vulnerable ( threat category 2), one of these
six is extremelyrare in Sweden. The cause of the exceptionally high concentration
ofredlisted and rare lichens around Roennoeforsen is the
presence of streamfog generated by the stream, which creates a very moist
microclimate inthe area close to the stream.

If the stream is regulated this moist habitat will disappear
and thelichens will be threatened by desiccation. In order to
try to preserve themoisture Jaemtkraft wants to install a device which will
produce fog.Since such an experiment has never been done before and
hence little isknown about how such a device works in nature, this means
an unacceptablylarge threat to this unique lichen locality. The
advise of researchers inecological botany is to do this experiment somewhere
else in the stream orin another stream in order not to jeopardise the lichens.
These requestshave been completely neglected by Jaemtkraft. Further,
nothing had beensaid about how much the device is allowed to cost and
how much energy itis allowed to consume, for how long it will work and
so on.

Unfortunately, the project is already initiated, but the
stream is stillnot affected. We hope that the project still can be stopped
by boycott ofthe company. Except for the nature values, the cultural
values ofRoennoeforsen are of national interest and include an
old iron mill withblast furnace, museum, exhibition localities, cafeteria
and bakery etc.All this has to be closed if the stream is exploited
and people will losetheir jobs in a rural part of Sweden which already suffers
fromunemployment.

Almost all larger waterfalls and rivers in Sweden have
been exploited forhydropower during the last 100 years. Large nature values
have disappearedand now the power companies want our last free flowing
streams / rivers.

How can the Swedish government and authorities permit
this? Sweden hassigned the convention of Conservation of biological diversity
in Rio andstill permission can be given to such projects. How is
it possible? Werequire that the prime minister Goeran Persson, environment
minister KjellLarsson and the rest of the Swedish government take their
responsibilityfor the biological diversity by immediately stopping
the exploitation ofRoennoeforsen.

For more information contact: Annchristine Holmberg<annchristine.holmberg@jll.se>

Please help us by sending letters of protest to the power
companyJaemtkraft and the Swedish government! Thanks in advance.

Draft letters:To Henrik grill, executive director, JaemtkraftDear sir,It has come to my attention that your company has started
theexploitation of the Roennoeforsen rapid in the province
of Jaemtland,Sweden.I have been informed of the extreme high nature values
of the area andfind it unacceptable that Jaemtkraft is exploiting one
of the last andmost valuable streams in your country.I urge you to stop this project immediately!Sincerely,

Dear sirs,It has come to my attention that the Swedish powercompany
Jaemtkraft hasstarted the exploitation of the Roennoeforsen rapid in
the province ofJaemtland, Sweden.Í find it unacceptable that a rich and progressive
country like Swedenis exploiting one of its last and most valuable
streams.I have been told that the exploitation area hosts
a unique lichenlocality with 19 redlisted species. – nature values which
are mostlikely going to be destroyed by the exploitation.How can the Swedish government and authorities permit
this? Sweden hassigned the convention of conservation of biological diversity
in Rio andstill permission can be given to such projects. How is
it possible? Werequire that the Swedish government takes their responsibility
for thebiological diversity by immediately stopping the exploitation
ofRoennoeforsen.Sincerely,

Send the letter to: <regeringen@regeringen.se>

End

28.06.99 : China: Report
on Three Gorges Visite

When China's Three Gorges Dam is completed in the year
2010, it will be themost powerful hydroelectric dam in the world. It
costs an estimated $70billion USD. There have been ongoing concerns about
the environmental andsocial costs of the project, but in recent weeks, China's
state-controlledmedia have been unusually outspoken about whether it's
such a good ideaafter all. As other infrastructure projects fail
around the country, manynow worry that the dam may not hold.

With three and a half years to go until the Yangtze Valley
is flooded,construction on the vast Three Gorges Dam continues full
speed ahead. Thousands of workers are busy pouring concrete, moving
earth, levelingsurfaces. Busloads of tourists come to watch the
spectacle, even on a gray,rainy morning. They huddle on a lookout platform,
their umbrellas a splash ofred and yellow against a gloomy sky. The director
of the Three Gorges Damproject, Lu Youmei, says this work may be fun to watch,
but it's far fromeasy to do.

Mr. Lu Youmei: (Through Translator) For project construction,
we are going toencounter many challenges that have not been encountered
before in the historyof human beings.

MAGISTAD: Everything about the dam is on a massive scale.
It is to create areservoir 400 miles long and 600 feet deep, displacing
some one and a halfmillion people. Lu is more concerned about the
technical issues, such as thetemporary shiplock that failed during last year's massive
floods. That stoppedtraffic on the Yangtze River for more than two days.
Foreign engineers whohave visited the dam also caution that the bedrock is
weaker than originallythought. They worry that this could lead to high
rates of seepage and a weakfoundation. There are also reports of cavities
in the dam wall. PatriciaAdams heads the Toronto-based environmental group Probe
International.

Ms. PATRICIA ADAMS (Probe International): Large
cavities, I believe about 90square feet, and they are large enough that they're causing
concern. I believethat in one section of the dam, the engineers considered
blowing it up so thatthey could recast it and then decided against that because
they felt that itmight destabilize the rest of the dam that's been built.
And I believe thereare other problems, all to do with casting the concrete
with the quality of theconcrete and I guess the way that it has actually formed,
that it may not bestrong enough and it is not up to standard.

MAGISTAD: China's state council actually voted against
the Three Gorgesproject 10 years ago, but then, in the wake of the 1989
Tiananmen Squarecrackdown, the man who had called in the troops, then-Premier
Li Peng,pushed through the plan as a monument to Chinese pride.
Environmentalistsand human rights activists around the world have been
lobbying ever sinceto stop the project or at least scale it back.

Besides their concerns about the dam's structural integrity,
the critics arealso alarmed by the shoddy construction of many roads,
bridges and new townsbeing built to replace those that will be submerged.

(Soundbite of crowd)

MAGISTAD: Fengjie is one such place, a river town with
steep slopes leadingdown to its busy docks. It's to be relocated to
a site higher up a hill on theother side of the river. Two years ago, as workers
were laying foundationsthere for new buildings, there was a landslide.
Luckily, no one was hurt orkilled. Locals like 60-year-old Jao Gien Wan(ph)
are suspicious about why ithappened.

Ms. Jiao Jianwan: (Through Translator) Some people
called it a landslide,but we don't think it was. We think it was caused
by corruption becausethe local officials didn't put enough money into building
a strongfoundation to support the buildings.

MAGISTAD: All along the Yangtze, there is evidence that
a sudden surge ofmoney into poor counties has been too much for local
officials to resist.New roads have broken apart, bridges have collapsed,
killing dozens. Inmany cases, investigators have found that contractors
were forced to useinferior materials because they had to pay such large
bribes to localofficials. This has made Premier Zhu Rongji furious.
He calls suchprojects tofu construction because they hold up about
as well as tofu.

The implications for the Three Gorges Dam are obvious
and sobering, but projectdirector Lu Youmei insists that people need not worry.

Mr. Mr. Lu Youmei: (Through Translator) For those projects
with severequality problems, the main reason for failure is that
the construction ofthose projects did not comply with normal procedures
that should befollowed. With the Three Gorges Dam, that's simply
not the case.

MAGISTAD: Premier Zhu is still worried. He has called
on the Three GorgesDam project to start using foreign inspectors, since
local Chineseinspectors are more susceptible to being bought off.
`Make no mistake,'Zhu has told those in charge of the dam, `the weight
of responsibility onyour shoulders is like the weight of a mountain, and
if anything goeswrong, the cost in lives and in China's prestige will
be beyond imagination.'

This is the editorial comment in the latest SARA RiverNews.(Southern Africa Rivers Association (SARA) is an association
of rivertourism interests):

Big dams are a feature of the South African landscape.
They have been theresince at least the decade of the First World War, built
by successivegovernments to provide irrigation for farms, water and
power for factories,and sewage for cities. Dams are so common they seem "natural".
The averageSouth African, standing next to a river, will cry out
that "all this wateris running away to the sea and being wasted". The fact
that rivers haveflowed for all time, supporting the surrounding ecology,
seems to makelittle difference to this mindset.

SARA has for a long time questioned the wisdom of damming
the remainingwild and free rivers in Southern Africa. New dams are
planned or mooted forthe Orange, Tugela and Bushmans, Mkomazi, Mzimvubu, Doring,
Cunene,Kavango, Zambezi and other major rivers. Most of these
rivers are alreadypenned-in by mighty concrete walls. The new dams add
insult to injury.

But SARA faces a dilemma over its opposition to dams.
Water transferschemes like those on the Katse, which sends water north
to the Vaal, andthe Gariep, which sends water to the Great Fish River
basin, are likely toprovide a constant flow for river tour operators. Reliable
water flowsequal good business, and business is partly what SARA
is about. Weconstituted ourselves as an association to improve the
image andcompetitive position of river tourism. Dams do that,
don't they?

Well, yes, and no. Once dams are built, the best we can
hope for is thattheir impacts will be mitigated - in other words, we
have to make the bestof a bad job. One example of this is utilising the outflow
for whitewatersport and commercial operations, as is already happening
on the Great Fishand is suggested for the Ash River outfall at Clarens.
SARA stronglysupports any move to make use of the water transfers
in this way.

But face it, big dams do big damage to the environment
and often to thesocial fabric and heritage of the areas where they are
built. The fact thatthey may promote limited forms of ecotourism should not
blind us to theirserious negative impacts.

Popular governments who have the interests of the mass
of the people atheart are constructing walls across valleys because this
is the easiest -and the most short-sighted - way to capture water. The
Lesotho HighlandsWater Project (LHWP) will cost the SA taxpayer about
R10billion, and theplanned new Thukela dam system R5-R6bn more. The costs
will have to be metby taxpayers and water users, mainly in Gauteng. Ironically,
these RDP damswill hit the poor hardest.

Despite the costs it is claimed that dams are good for
development becausethey bring roads, irrigation schemes, industries, ecotourism,
and manyother benefits. In the world at large experience has
proved otherwise. OnAmerica's Colorado river ways are now being sought to
decommission majordams that were supposed to stand for all time and bring
development to thearid southwest.

By flooding river valleys we destroy precious riverine
forests and bioticcommunities. We drive people off the land, we drown their
culturalheritage. When riverbeds dry up due to damming, the dried-out
mudbankscollapse, causing serious siltation. And there are better
ways to generateelectricity, using solar and wind power.

SARA's mission is to protect rivers, as the basis of our
businesses, andhelp create sustainable conditions for ecotourism. Big
dams do neither.They are literally costing us the earth and all our rivers.
Only certaingroups benefit while the rest pay, and even those (like
river operators)who can make money from dam-controlled rivers are not
assured that theresource will remain reliable, because the water might
be piped away tosave evaporation.

South Africa needs a Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, designating
certain riversas inviolate, not to be dammed or opened to major constructions
such asroads and resorts. River guides and operators can promote
this throughdaily contact with corporate leaders and members of the
public and mediawho go on river trips.

By investing now in research and development into low-cost,
low-impactwater-purifying technologies, South Africans could lead
the way towards anew water dispensation for the entire globe. Wars will
be avoided, ruralpeoples get their land back, producers have enough water
for their needs,and recreationists may continue to run rivers knowing
that we have saved aprecious natural heritage from destruction.

24.06.99 : European Meeting
of the Youth for Water July 12-18in France

The European Meeting of the Youth for water is an interactive
and intergenerational process aiming at the recognition and valorization
of the role of the European Youth in the actions related with the environment
and water in particular. This process will develop over a twelve
month period (July 99 - June 2000) and be the statement of a devoted
citizenship.

Set up by the Solidarity Water Europe whose main role
is the mobilization and everyone's involvement in the collective management
of his environment, the European Meeting of the Youth for water was made
possible thanks to local, national and international partners.

From July 12 to 18, European youngsters between the age
of 11 to 15 years of age will participate in the two first steps of the
European Meeting of the Youth for water which will start up in Espalion
(Aveyron - France). This step achieved in cooperation with the H²O
French Central Massif Festival will get together about one hundred youngsters
with their teachers from around twenty European and Mediterranean countries..
These youngsters come from schools, associations and communities, and are
already involved in local actions regarding water management.

They will present their achievements and various forms
of involvement they used in their actions in the water management sector.

In Espalion, within the H²O Water Festival in French
Central Massif, they will participate in the debates leading to the preparation
of an official document, the Espalion Declaration, on one hand, and on
the other, the development of tools to sensitise the public at large
conveying a message of a European solidarity for an integrated management
of water. Furthermore, they will plan their future actions in the
same line as those already achieved.

On Saturday July 17, the Espalion Declaration will be
presented to the Water Parliament composed of these youngsters, local and
European agents. water professionals, scientific searchers and citizens.

Later on, the Espalion Declaration with its plan
of action will be issued throughout Europe with the help of the participants
in the first step of the process in Fall 1999 and Spring 2000 in the course
of public manifestations.

Finally , the Espalion Declaration and the attached documents
will be handed out to the MPs of the Environment, Territory Development
and local Authorities Commission of the Water Parliamentary Assembly of
the European Council in Strasbourg in May 2000 by a delegation of youngsters.

2. Context

The "Solidarity Water Europe" network promotes local initiatives
favouring a protection of the natural ecosystems and water savings in the
Europe of the 40. This promotion is done in co-operation with the
local agents and the youngsters , and aims at sensitising the decision
makers, the teachers and the public at large in order to develop, teach,
issue and implement sound water management. To do so, the Youth is
a lobbying group not to be neglected that can influence the social, economic
and local environmental situation. Moreover, it is of prime importance
to capitalise the experiences of the Youth, which is tomorrow's society.

The "Solidarity Water Europe" network, the "Environment,
Territory Development and local Authorities Commission of the Water Parliamentary
Assembly of the European Council", GREEN, the "River College", the city
of Espalion in co-operation with other local, national and international
partners, propose an awareness and public information campaign to the local
authorities and European MPs on the role to be played by the Youth in the
water management matters throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.

3. Objectives

The general objective of this action is to get together
the European Youth from various countries and regions within the Europe
of the 40 and the Mediterranean shore for a better mutual understanding
and for the promotion of the vision of civil and democratic Europe united
by its waters. Simultaneously, the various actions will demonstrate
the importance and the value of water for Europe.

The youngsters will discuss their experiences related
to water management in Europe. They will present their achievements
and the various forms of involvement in local actions regarding water management.
They will sensitise the European public and the local, national and international
representatives to the idea of conserving the natural resource called water
and will issue their vision as decision makers of tomorrow's Europe.

4.. Process, steps and forecasted activities

The "Solidarity Water Europe" network and its partners
will organise, through this action of a European Meeting of the Youth for
Water, a process divided into three steps.

As you are well aware, the controversy over large dams
on the Narmada hasbecome one of the most important social issues in India
today. In aneffort to disseminate information and present the perspective
of people'sstruggles on this issue, we have created a new site,http://www.narmada.org. Through this site, we will endeavour
to keep youinformed of the activities in the valley, the developing
issues andprovide an informed perspective on the debate. I would
request each one ofyou to take a look and to visit this site periodically.
Please do alsoforward this message to your friends who would be interested
in thisstruggle.

With the arrival of monsoon in India, the Andolan faces
perhaps thegreatest challenge till date. This monsoon as many as
2000 tribalsfamilies may lose their homes and lands. Satyagraha has
already begun inthe Narmada Valley and people are firmly resolved to
stay and assert theirright over their lands and their homes. At this juncture,
it is importantthat we come together in solidarity with the Andolan
and help inmobilising public opinion on this matter. If you are
interested in lendinga hand, organising an event or in visiting the valley
to express yoursupport, please send me (venu@cfar.umd.edu) a note. In
the weeks to come,your help will be critical.